Blog
>> Child health

Could an improving disease environment – which allows people to retain, absorb, and use more of the calories they consume – reduce calorie needs, and explain some of the puzzle of the decline in average calorie consumption in India over...Read More..

Last week I went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to present our research on sanitation and child height at the UNC Water and Health conference. While traveling, I replaced my old suitcase from Banswara, Rajasthan with a new one, in...Read More..

That's what a new working paper, joint with Sneha Lamba, seems to suggest. Read the paper here: "Effects of Early-Life Exposure to Sanitation on Childhood Cognitive Skills: Evidence from India's Total Sanitation Campaign." Some of you may have seen an...Read More..

Today we have a guest post from our wonderful colleague/guide/interpreter in Bangladesh, Zubair Karim. Zubair, thanks so much for your perspective and for all of your help on the trip! It really would not have been nearly as successful without...Read More..

Check out this new paper by Oliver, Dean and Arabinda in PLOS One, based on new data on stunting from the recent Hungama Survey, and sanitation data from the Indian census. The Hindu reported the findings of the paper, too....Read More..

I just posted a preliminary draft of a new working paper that suggests that open defecation is an important cause of anemia, a disease which affects large numbers of children in India, causing cognitive and developmental delays. In case you...Read More..

Everybody interested in the determinants of population average heights should read this new paper by Timothy Hatton, available here: http://www.west-info.eu/files/Research-Oxford-Journal-2013.pdf The message remains clear: population heights are not fixed, immutable essences but reflect environmental, nutritional, and early-life health conditions. When...Read More..

Here at rice we have a big focus on sanitation and the problems that it causes for kids’ health, but we are often reminded that lots of things are going wrong for infant and child growth in India. One of...Read More..

The Ideas for India website just published a version of Sangita's summary of the proceedings of the "International Conference on Child height and stunting: Early-life diseases, water quality and sanitation". See here....Read More..

The Economic and Political Weekly published six articles discussing Arvind Panagaria's claim that Child Malnutrition figures in India are exaggerated. The issue is available here (see discussion section). Don't miss the short article co-authored by Dean and Diane, along with...Read More..

Last night – somewhat against my better judgment as a statistical economist, not a TV star – I accepted Sagarika Ghose’s kind invitation to be on her State of the Nation TV program on CNN-IBN. I was honored to be...Read More..

Hello. I am Aashish, and I have just started working for rice. I spent the most of May and June being an investigator for the PEEP Survey 2013 in Uttar Pradesh, and this first post for the rice-blog is about...Read More..

After a year of preparations, we are very excited to announce a two-day international conference on child height and sanitation at the Delhi School of Economics, starting at 9:00am on Friday, August 2nd. If you are planning to come, please...Read More..

At rice, one of the threats to human development in India that we emphasize most is the effect of widespread open defecation on children’s growth and development – reflected most readily in height and stunting. The important connection between sanitation...Read More..